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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Great art, lousy tarot deck, August 17, 2010
This review is from: The Vampires Tarot of Eternal Night (Cards)
Vampires, Tarot of the Eternal Night is attractive to look at but lousy for a tarot deck. Tarot decks are a challenge for the artist. They have to create nearly 80 pictures for just the one project. The cards have to be pleasant to look at, stick to a theme and convey the traditional imagery of the cards so they can be read. Normally I'd agree that two out of three ain't bad but here there deck so badly misses the third point as to make the deck useless for tarot.
It is a nice deck. The pictures are lovely and dark and avoid the porno vampire images and keep it sort of quasi Victorian man/beast stuff. The back drop is supposed to be sort of slightly shabby Rumanian night.
The problems with the images is that they usually don't carry off the required message. With the lesser cards traditionally the theme is repeated on the card- 5 cups are in the picture in the 5 of cups card. The challenge for the artist is to work them in. These have a picture with a number at the top and the suit at the bottom. But when it's more than one or two of each that disappears here, meaning the person using the deck doesn't really need the picture at all, just remember the numbers and suits. The 10 of swords for example, traditionally is some variation on a body riddled with blades. Here it's someone about to be staked. Is that the 10 of swords (real death) or the 9 of swords (fear of death) but you don't need the image, just the number and suit. Reader should use the picture for inspiration so you don't need to memorize all those details. These would just be a collection of numbers rather than inspiration.
The major cards are even worse. Just numbered, no title which is ok if the picture is invocative but these aren't. Not even close. For example card 11 is justice. The image in most decks is usually something about a judge . Here it's a slim woman sitting on a thrown holding the bat winged wand of the deck's image in one hand and a scale in the other .but the woman is not impressive and the scale is pretty small sort of lost in the other imagery. By the image this is more likely the queen of wands maybe- or the 6 of coins/pentacles oh right ignore the picture just look at the numbers. Card 21 the world shows a woman standing on a small path with a candle in each hand - it looks far more like a woman caught between problems the traditional imagery of either the2 of swords or 2 of coins is closer. 15, the devil in the deck is a beast vampire. Ok, a beast but the rest of the deck is full of these images too so it doesn't stand out.
Examples go on and on and on. The bottom line is that the pictures are nice for what they are, representations of vampires, However as tarot cards conveying traditional images within their own ethos, it kind of...sucks (well they are vampires.) nice to look at if you like vamps but as a tarot deck, move on. Not working and not worth it.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Nice, but not as complete as it could be, July 1, 2010
This review is from: The Vampires Tarot of Eternal Night (Cards)
I must admit that buying Tarot decks is addictive for me. I find a deck with beautiful art and I find more often then not that I have to have it! :)
I have many decks, but only use a few on a regular basis. I hoped to add this deck to my "regular" rotation. However, I do have a few...grumbles about this deck.
First, the artwork is beautiful and interesting. The images are clearly computer generated, but mesmerizing. (I feel compelled to note that the images aren't just of vampires or vampire lore. There are also werewolves and some gargoyles, which could displease someone who thought the deck was composed of just vampire images.) Yet, the deck is confusing to use for a few reasons. Most tarot decks have cards that are properly labelled. A card will read "The Moon" or "The Sun", etc. However, these cards put symbols where the titles should be. One needs to use the booklet to figure out what the card is in the first place before moving on to read the meaning of the card itself.
Which brings me to another complaint. Most tarot decks have meanings for the reversed positions of the cards. There is a good and bad side to everything, so most decks have both meanings defined with each card. This deck only tells you the meaning of the right-side-up position of the card. There is no meaning if you draw the card and it is upside down. Sure, you can guess and say the reversed is the opposite of the right-side-up meaning, but most tarot decks don't let you make that leap on your own.
Personally, I found this deck to be a bit lacking. The art is wonderful, don't get me wrong, but the lack of proper titles and reversed meanings makes it a bit difficult to use and take seriously.
I don't regret buying the deck. I will try to get used to the differences and use it, but I didn't think it was one of the best on the market.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful but Tricky, March 30, 2010
This review is from: The Vampires Tarot of Eternal Night (Cards)
I found the artwork to be beautiful, the imagery is dark but intricate enough to allow for my style of reading to work well...the one problem I have with it is that the point of view of the imagery is so skewed towards darker ideas that I've found it tricky to use.
Still, if you are a fan of vampires, Gothic images, and have a darker point of view this is a great deck.
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